12-18-2017, 02:20 PM
(12-18-2017, 12:38 PM)Nately120 Wrote: That's how I see it, too. We had a top offense in 2015 and we went into 2016 having lost Hue, Marvin Jones, Sanu, Eifert (because he was hurt) and we convinced ourselves that Hue was too cute, Jones and Sanu were easy to replace with Lafell, Eifert being hurt would open the door for Kroft, and Zampese would tie it all together by being in over his head and having to let Dalton call the shots.
2016 was a big step backwards. Then we go into 2017 having lost our 2 best o-linemen and we are back to convincing ourselves that we made the right move by letting people walk, again. We are more inclined to let people go and less inclined to sign FA's to plug the holes we allow to appear...and we have 2 really bad seasons back-to-back to show for it.
Seriously, 6 wins and now what...probably a 5 or 6 win season? To put this in perspective, prior to the Browns completely blowing things up these past few years, they've been good for about 5 wins per year since they were last semi-relevant. We are looking at our 2nd season in a row of being slightly better than one could expect the Browns to be. Ouch.
5 or 6 wins this year is equivalent to 2-3 wins most years with our epically weak schedule.
But yes - Free agency ripped this team apart. The Bengals sold us on saving cap money by not signing free agents to keep this team together indefinitely...but that wasn't realistic.
For our model to work, we need to have 2-3 good drafts over every 4-5 year span to replace guys we lose.
It's going to take catching lighting in a bottle to have an elite roster again. Not signing free agents just puts so much pressure on us to draft and develop players.
